This is something that I've thought and posted about before, certainly, but I wanted to make a thread about it again.
Which is the better choice? It's a tough question, really. While on the PC physical games are mostly dead, the occasional limited edition or Europe-region box excepted, on consoles most games that aren'[t indie titles have a physical release... but for some games, digital sales allow you to get a digital copy of a game for a lot less than it would cost if you bought it used. The current PSN sale, which ends soon, has reminded me of this question again, and I still don't really have a good answer. Usually on consoles I prefer to get digital-only games digitally and physically-released titles as a physical copy, unless it's "free" like the Games with Gold titles are or if it's a good deal for a game I definitely want to play, but it's tough.
On the one hand, a physical copy comes with at least the semblance of real ownership rights. You've actually got a disc copy of something, after all. You also can sell the game if you want (though I very rarely do this of course), something you currently can't do with digital titles, and have a box to display on the shelf, which I like. On the other hand, a digital game comes with a limited license which the platform holder could revoke at any time, say, if you (wrongfully or otherwise) get banned from their platform's online service for example. This has never happened to me, but while most online service bans are for good reason, I'm sure some aren't. And while on PC you have the ability to at least get your money back for purchases if you meet certain qualifications (that you have not owned the game for long or played it much, for Steam, or if it doesn't work, for Steam or GOG) for several of the biggest online stores, on consoles you have no recourse, money spent is gone. That's awful, and up to this point buying those physical copies seems a lot better.
On another Sony-related note though, the PSP has several unique issues to consider about this question. While I mostly have physical disc copies of games for the thing, more digital games might be nice because PSP disc drives can fail (I had one PSP die on me several years ago for instance...) and so can the discs; disc drives are not great for a portable system, as the PSP shows. Digital games on flash memory cards are much more durable. On the other hand PSP game discs are region-free, while digital games are region locked and switching regions on a PSP is not simple; you could solve this issue with custom firmware, but I've never used that actually. And while I only have a regular PSP, if I ever did want a PSP Go (I don't think I would) I'd need digital games for that... or custom firmware and backups. But anyway, the PSP is kind of a weird case, but even there the large majority of my collection is, again, disc-based.
But to get back to the main point, looking at the prices in this sale, here are a few examples of what you see: $3 for a digital copy of Twisted Metal for the PS3, or $10 or more for a physical copy (unless you get a deal on ebay)? $4 for Playstation Allstars Battle Royale digitally, or $9-plus for physical? All the PS3 Ratchet & Clank games are in this sale, among many more, all for less than physical prices. Etc, etc; lots of games are available for far below the prices I see them for in stores around here. You may be able to match those digital prices on ebay, for some games at least, but ebay has more risk, in if the game will actually show up, if it will work, etc. And some of these digital prices are just plain lower. But despite that, in sales like this I keep hesitating to buy the cheaper digital games... then I don't buy the physical copy either, because it costs 'too much'. Heh. Maybe I'll get a few now, but regardless of that, this is an interesting question: how much more is a physical copy of a game worth, versus a digital one? Which is the better choice, and how much more would you pay for it? Or do you just buy both, to cover all your bases...
I'm glad the tide of public opinion has finally turned against these new age retro hippies and their "cures".
Seriously though, the worst thing to happen to the progressive movement is for the woowoo crowd to glomp onto it and claim it as their own. You've got far too many progressive left-wingers who reject all manner of science like vaccines, which isn't helping anyone. Oh, and by the way, yes, there are plenty of right wingers who have been embracing these claims for years. There is a chiropractic clinic for every two churches where I live.
This is a big one here. I already owned all the games on the NES Classic, so I only bought one for my niece. However, the SNES Classic has one game I don't own, Star Fox 2! That's right, the cancelled one!
There is a ROM floating around of an incomplete version. It was recently confirmed in an interview that Nintendo has a fully complete version of the game, in English. In other words, there's a very good chance that's the version we're going to see.
This video covers literally everything I could say, sparing the details of specific children dying of preventable diseases (because it is a comedy show after all).
Okay, one other thing. That "definition of insanity" quote that Einstein definitely didn't say? Well, it is absolutely not the definition of insanity. The definition of insanity is
2.Law. such unsoundness of mind as frees one from legal responsibility,as for committing a crime, or as signals one's lack of legal capacity,as for entering into a contractual agreement.
2.Law. such unsoundness of mind as frees one from legal responsibility,as for committing a crime, or as signals one's lack of legal capacity,as for entering into a contractual agreement.
extreme foolishness; folly; senselessness; foolhardiness:Trying to drive through that traffic would be pure insanity.
a foolish or senseless action, policy, statement, etc.:We've heard decades of insanities in our political discourse.
I know, but still. Also, that definition isn't nearly specific enough for the medical community, which have written numerous entire books filled with literally the current definition of insanity on a case by case basis.
Lastly, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" isn't even always irrational. Throwing dice has "different results" every time, and if you're about to say "But DJ, clearly you didn't throw the dice the exact same way under the exact same conditions every time." well NOW who's being pedantic? Also, THAT level of detail was never implied by the quote, nor is it ever applied to cases where the exact same starting conditions apply literally every time. Also, replicating scientific experiments is literally doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, but we NEED replicated studies for science to work correctly (as Jon Oliver himself has covered before).
But never mind about that expression, because this video reports that our current president thinks vaccines are dangerous, which makes Trump even more dangerous than he already is, and is also not even the slightest bit surprising.
I know I've said this before, but seriously, it's true.
Now, Tuesday, we saw the Democrats lose two more House special elections. I thought that would happen -- my guess was that Ossoff would lose narrowly in Georgia and that happened, unfortunately (thought 52-48 is a slightly wider loss than I thought it would be) -- but it's disappointing. I do need to say though, that the other special election most people weren't paying attention to, in South Carolina... the Republican won only 51-48, a three point margin! That's pretty impressive for South Carolina, and for a seat that Trump won by more than 20%. A loss is a loss, definitely, but it is a somewhat promising sign to see such large gains on how Democrats have done in those seats in recent decades. The 2018 general election still could potentially be pretty good for the Democrats...
...
But, as the thread title says, gerrymandering is a really serious problem in this country. Now, I know that it is not the only cause of Republican domination; demographic self-selection, how so many liberals live in cities while the larger countryside areas are more conservative is a major cause as well, as that leads to more Republican-leaning districts than Democratic. It is a huge one, though. Recently a Daily Kos article showed how in Pennsylvania for instance, while the Democrats won it for President every time from '92 to '12, and state-level races like governor and Senate went back and forth, Republicans gerrymandered themselves in a strong majority in the state house, and thus through redistricting in the states' US House of Representatives representation. Republicans have a stable 13-to-5 majority in PA's House representation, a margin which held up through the 2008 Obama election wave for example. 13 Republicans to 5 Democrats in an evenly divided state is absurd, but thanks to our broken political system which allows representatives to draw their own district lines it is a reality. There has alway been gerrymandering in this country of course, the term dates back to the colonial days of the 1700s, but computer technology that allows people to easily target down to the house which areas to put in each district for maximum control, gerrymandering is far more effective now than it ever has been before. As a result Republicans have a solid lock on most state houses and the US House despite usually losing the national popular votes in both categories, and that is a horrible reality which is dragging this country down -- the system is absurdly rigged against our side and that's a huge problem.
Yes, there are other huge factors helping Republicans -- old people are more conservative than the young and they are far more likely to vote than younger people are; Republicans are much more likely to go out and support whoever has the "R" next to their name, while Democrats argue and in-fight constantly unless they consider their candidate perfect; as mentioned earlier geographic self-selection is a huge issue because it makes it hard to not have maps with a larger Republican lean than they should have on a purely population-derived basis; voter suppression efforts, particularly aimed at minorities, are often successful; the degree of political polarization we have in this country now is damaging, for instance because it has led to a situation where I honestly wonder if the Republican Party would act against Trump even if a tape of him literally swearing loyalty to Putin leaked, or something; sexism is still a huge problem, as you see with how the right treats Hillary and Nancy Pelosi (and other leading Democratic women like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren as well); the electoral college badly needs to go; and more. Where is the major American effort to keep out Russian hacking of our election systems, like they are doing in France and Germany, for example? Or are we just going to let them in, to have them ... help us "manage" our democracy so that it becomes more like Russia's... yes, our political system has many problems now.
But despite all that, I do think that gerrymandering is the biggest issue America faces now, and is at the root of so many of our other problems. Polarization? That would be destructive in any situation today, but if most representatives had to face competitive elections every other year, instead of only a relative handful of them, it would make a HUGE difference. Because of geographic selection Dems would need to win more than their share of votes to win the House, but analysis has shown that the Dems would have won the House back, probably multiple times, since we lost it in 2010 if all districts nationwide were not gerrymandered... and just imagine how much of a difference that would have made, even if it did not change the Senate at all! Dems won a majority of votes cast nationwide in US House races in 2016, just to start. Just like with the Presidency since '92, Republicans only win because they game the system to win despite losing. In the case of the Electoral College, the best solution, a constitutional amendment, is nearly impossible. The easier route, getting a majority of EC votes can be brought to support the National Popular Vote compact, could work but those votes are not currently there, since Republicans dominate most states and have little interest in actual democracy anymore. And in the case of gerrymandering... well, there is a case that just went to the Supreme Court about gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Had the Republicans not stolen that Supreme Court seat last year I think it would probably go the way that is badly needed, towards turning over precedent and restricting gerrymandering, but with the court as it is... we need to rely on Kennedy to support major gerrymandering reform? It needs to happen for this nation to not continue slipping away from democracy; when elections don't matter because even when you win you lose anyway, that is not a healthy democracy!
Of course, without changing gerrymandering you could just win state legislatures again and then after the 2020 census un-gerrymander, or Democratic-gerrymander, the nation to get control back, but that is only a temporary solution that doesn't actually fix the problem, and rigging things our way is hardly an ideal solution anyway, what you want are fair elections! And anyway, of course, when so many states have such effective gerrymanders, such a thing is hardly likely.
So yeah, my expectations are low, but.. Supreme Court, please do something. The Court took one other gerrymandering case on this year, a case about North Carolina's very openly partisan and racist gerrymander. North Carolina's GOP is the most militantly excessive in the nation in all things voter / elected Democratic official suppression, and they have one of the many very strong Republican gerrymanders in what should be a competitive state. This was challenged, and the NC GOP's defense that it was just a party-based thing and not a racial one -- since racial gerrymanders are banned per federal law, beyond the required minority districts of course -- did not hold up in the Supreme Court because they decided that in a state like that race and party are so closely connected that they were pretty much the same. The shocker is, though, that Clarence Thomas (!) and the four liberals were the 5 in this 5-4 vote that decided NC's gerrymander went too far, and two districts will need to be completely redone... and thus the whole state's House of Representatives district map, probably. More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...cting.html
Yes, Clarence Thomas, perhaps because of being a black man from the South, decided, despite his history of not caring about such things... for the liberal side on an issue of race and politics. That's fantastic, but that Kennedy did not also support him is a bad sign, and I doubt that, as great as the NC decision is for southern states, that signs are good for the even more important Wisconsin case upcoming (more info on that: https://thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-...f545f8ca02 ). Until this NC case the Supreme Court previously had always said that a gerrymander based on political party identification is legal. The problem is, in Wisconsin, or other states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and such, the racial element that won the day in North Carolina isn't a major factor, so you're just left with a question of partisan gerrymandering and whether it should be allowed. It is incredibly important that partisan gerrymandering is finally done away with, but will one of the right-wing group on the Court, most likely Kennedy but perhaps another, actually decide that way? All five of them supported a hold on enforcing the lower court decision against Wisconsin (that is, the lower court said that the gerrymander was illegal), so initial signs are not good. But again thanks to technology being as it is now so that it is easy to draw district lines that make it pretty much impossible for one party, usually Democrats, to ever win in most states in this country regardless of how the popular votes go. This needs to stop if we want American democracy to maybe, perhaps, stop falling apart as it seems to be. The Wisconsin case is extremely important, but will the Supreme Court actually change anything? I doubt it, but I want to be proven wrong.
This is not an issue of partisanship, of wanting Democrats to win instead of Republicans. With fair lines both parties would win sometimes, and that is fine. This is an issue of fairness, of still being a nation of freedom and democracy, the nation holding the "lamp at the golden door". You cannot be the great nation we are without free and fair elections.
Not only is Pauline back, not only is that song above actually sung by her, she's no longer just a famous star, she's the mayor. Pauline's got more development in this game than Peach has in the past 7.
It's a 2.5d Metroid game for the 3DS, just announced. Yes, really. Apparently it's being made by Mercury Steam, overseen by Sakamoto, so who knows if it'll be good or not but this sure is a nice surprise! They're showing gameplay now and it looks fun.
And... it's a re-imagining of Metroid 2 for the Game Boy. Yes, really. AM2R or this, which will be the better Metroid 2 remake?
It would seem Nintendo has decided to go back to what worked and abandon any ideas of making "Other M 2". Here's hoping they were able to bring the band back together for this one.
